Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Tony West (DOJ)
In a move that is expected to speed up fraud investigations, Attorney General Eric Holder has signed an order allowing U.S. Attorneys to issue civil investigative demands under the False Claims Act.
The civil investigative demand is a potent administrative subpoena that covers documents, depositions and interrogatories. The Justice Department can issue CIDs before it files a complaint or until it joins a qui tam action — a lawsuit filed by a private citizen on behalf of the federal government — and thus before a potential defendant can conduct its own discovery.
Until January, only the Attorney General could approve CIDs, and, consequently, they were used sparingly. But in May 2009 Congress passed an anti-fraud bill that, among other things, allowed him to delegate the power to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, Tony West. In a Jan. 15 order, Holder also permitted West to redelegate the authority to U.S. Attorneys, with a notice and reporting requirement.
The final rule will be published in Wednesday’s Federal Register.
Here is the key passage on CIDs:
Authority relating to Civil Investigative Demands issued under the False Claims Act is hereby delegated to United States Attorneys in cases that are delegated or assigned as monitored to their respective components. In accordance with guidelines provided by the Assistant Attorney General, each United States Attorney must provide notice and a report of Civil Investigative Demands issued by the United States Attorney. When a case is jointly handled by the Civil Division and a United States Attorney’s Office, the Civil Division will issue a Civil Investigative Demand only after requesting the United States Attorney’s recommendation.
The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 also gave the Justice Department more freedom to share information gleaned from CIDs with whistleblowers and federal and state agencies, effectively acting as a force multiplier. West has said he expects more frequent use of the CIDs, combined with greater information-sharing, to quicken the case flow, allowing the government to recover more tax dollars lost to fraud.
The Justice Department has recovered more than $3 billion in False Claims Act cases since January 2009.
Thank you. I hope they work fast, there are a lot of financial arsonists getting away with it right now.
[...] early last year, West and U.S. Attorneys have been able to approve civil investigative demands, increasing their use. The DOJ can use the administrative subpoena [...]